Despite strong social riptides working against it — the liberalization of divorce laws, the vanishing stigma of divorce, the continual online temptations of social sites like MySpace or Facebook — the marriage bond is far stronger in 21st-century America than many may assume. Infidelity is one of the most common reasons cited by people who divorce. But surveys find the majority of people who discover a cheating spouse remain married to that person for years afterward. Many millions more shrug off, or work through, strong suspicions or evidence of infidelity. And recent trends in marriage suggest that the institution itself has become more resilient in recent years, not less so.

The article looks at statistics and finds that since more people are staying married, despite the temptations to get divorced or cheat, marriage is working. It ignores one key fact, that perhaps less people are actually getting married, but more often just live together. The article does acknowledge that since people get married older, they are more clear about what they want and are better equipped at “making it work.”
Firstly, if it is true, that people stay together after infidelity, looking at examples of public officials is not a good gauge of this since public couples have more at stake to stay together and not be destroyed by the public eye and the news media. They want to make an example of how they can overcome obstacle in their relationships, even if it is at great personal cost.
Secondly, if people are staying together despite infidelity, it could be for a variety of reasons. One, the pressure of marriage, culturally and financially doesn’t allow for all the transgressions we think our “free” society allows and second, our view of monogamy has shifted and we can accept when someone falls off the path of heteronormative monogamy. I am sure there are more open marriages now than there were say 30 years ago.
But that doesn’t change the main argument in the article which is really about how marriage is a resilient social institution. And I think it is safe to say the fact that marriage has become a booming industry, increasing cultural norm in almost retrograde terms and the government’s re-commitment to keep it between a man and a woman are not innocent players in this supposed resiliency. So I guess the question is, has anything really changed? Has feminism helped at all in helping women not buy into the industry of marriage?
Well, interestingly, it seems that feminism is part of what is keeping marriage working.

Some of the same social changes that have unsettled traditional 1950s-era marriages have seemingly deepened them in the 1990s and 2000s. Today women are contributing more financially to relationships than earlier generations, and men are contributing more to the domestic duties. Compared with earlier generations, men and women today are more likely to marry someone like themselves, with a similar educational background, experts say. The relationship is less about dividing economic and domestic duties and more about shared interests and mutual happiness.

That is something I can buy, but I still take issue with the “who” of these articles. Only a handful of my friends are actually getting married. Many of them may want to, but many of them are having kids without husbands and they are not getting married. Some because they don’t want to, or they haven’t found someone to marry or they don’t have access to the means to have a wedding. I am over studies that are just about how middle class people stay married and cheat or do not cheat. What are the relationship habits of people that don’t marry, that try alternatives, that don’t have social access to marriage (the queer community, poor people, etc), what are they doing? Their behavior will tell us much more about the institution of marriage than just looking at statistics of how many people are staying married.

Emma Morano is an Italian centenarian who, at 115, is the oldest living person in Europe. In a profile in the New York Timesyesterday, she credits her longevity to eating three raw eggs a day and never remarrying after an early divorce.

Ms. Morano has no doubts about how she made it this long: Her elixir for longevity consists of raw eggs, which she has been eating — three per day — since her teens when a doctor recommended them to counter anemia. Assuming she has been true to her word, Ms. Morano would have consumed around 100,000 eggs in her lifetime, give or take a thousand, cholesterol be damned.

She is ...

Emma Morano is an Italian centenarian who, at 115, is the oldest living person in Europe. In a profile in the New York Timesyesterday, she credits her longevity to eating three raw eggs a day and never ...

In high school, my friend Jess made me a mix tape with Sleater-Kinney’s “Dig Me Out” on it, alongside some Tori Amos and some Smoking Popes. We played that thing into the ground, listening to it in my 1988 Saab as we zipped around back country roads during long, hot summer nights. It was 2000 and a time in our lives of rawness. Transitions every which way we turned; deep and unrequited crushes; the budding of even deeper female friendship; the untimely death of a beloved cousin. We held hands and loved each other, Jess and I. Later we grew apart, though I think somehow we knew that was ...

Ed. note: This post was originally published on the Community site.

In high school, my friend Jess made me a mix tape with Sleater-Kinney’s “Dig Me Out” on it, alongside some Tori Amos and some Smoking Popes. We ...

Rebecca Traister has a great, comprehensive piece about how “simple, systemic failures” — like these — ensure that “the act of having a baby turns out to be a stunningly precarious economic and professional choice” in the US. Currently at home with a new child, she notes that the fact that she’s supported by the good parental leave policy offered by The New Republic means she’s “won the woman lottery.”

Eighty-eight percent of American women do not get paid for a single day or a single hour after they give birth. When I had my first child, three-and-a-half years ago, for reasons related to my particular professional choices, I did not get paid leave.

This is what it felt like: It felt ...

Rebecca Traister has a great, comprehensive piece about how “simple, systemic failures” — like these — ensure that “the act of having a baby turns out to be a stunningly precarious economic and professional choice” in the ...